Currently in contact centers there is a relatively simple model for an agent state. They are either:
Ready—Can be routed contacts;
Not Ready—Cannot be routed contacts; or
Busy—Cannot be routed contacts
This model works well for contact centers handling only voice contacts, as an agent can only handle one voice contact (task) at a time. It can work for other media including email and Instant Messaging (IM), assuming the agent handles only one contact at a time.
In Unified Communication (UC) environments, however, agents can simultaneously handle multiple multimedia conversations. This causes problems for the above model in that agents can now have more states, for example, Presence states, Available, Busy Away, Do Not Disturb, Offline etc. and even so these states may not be appropriate for determining an agent's availability to deal with a new contact.
Existing contact centers use relatively limited and simplistic formulae when deciding which agent should handle a new contact. These can be based on the predefined capacity of the agent, for example, how many IM contacts they can handle at once and the time elapsed since a contact was last routed to them.
There is a need for an improved system for routing of a contact center communication session.